Leave Confederate flags to museums and commemorative ceremonies

It appears in the background of courtroom scenes in old "Matlock" television shows from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Sooner or later, Atlanta attorney Ben Matlock is in a courtroom grilling a witness on the stand. Just as invariably, two flags are displayed in the background — the American flag and what we know as the Confederate flag — hanging side by side as if they are of equal stature and equal importance.

This flag doesn't represent any country or state today, yet it's defended as an icon of Southern heritage. It should not be. Rather, it should be relegated to museums.

What's strange is it was not the flag used by the Confederate army during the Civil War, nor was it ever an official banner of the Confederacy. It was, in fact, the battle flag flown by several Confederate Army units, including General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

In a study of Confederate symbols by Southern political scientists James Michael Martinez, William Donald Richardson and Ron McNinch, they concluded, "The battle flag (which the term for the flag we know) was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any Confederate capitals and was never officially used by Confederate veterans groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent Ku Klux Klan and by Southern Democrats during the 1948 presidential election."

Nor does it resemble any of the three Confederate flags used during the Civil War, from the original Stars and Bars flag of a corner of stars with broad red and white stripes to a white flag with the battle flag in one corner to this flag having a broad red stripe added to one end.

After the Civil War, Confederate flags only surfaced at historical ceremonies and those remembering fallen Confederate soldiers. It was seen in the 1939 movie version of the Southern classic "Gone with the Wind." But it only burst into prominence in 1948 when South Carolina politician Strom Thurmond, for many years a U.S. senator, ran for president under the newly formed Southern States Rights Party, also known as the Dixiecrats, who split off from the Democratic Party after they adopted a civil rights plank. Article 4 of the Dixiecrats' platform made their purpose clear: it read "We stand for the segregation of the races."

At that convention, student delegates from Southern colleges and universities waved the Confederate battle flag and Southerners took it up as a symbol of defiance to the mainstream Democratic Party and to civil rights, as well.

Thurmond lost the election to Harry Truman and segregationists lost their battle as well, starting with the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which allowed black children access to all schools. When the civil rights movement hit the South in the 1960s, the Confederate battle flag popped up more and more as a symbol of resistance to integration and civil rights.

Meanwhile, Southern blacks and others supporting civil rights for the descendants of slaves in the south saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of oppression to blacks and support of white supremacy. Not only did the KKK start using the Confederate flag in the late 1930s and 1940s, but blacks saw the flag itself as a symbol of resistance to black equality from the very beginning.

"To put it more simply, South Carolina and the rest of the South only seceded to preserve the violent domination and enslavement of black people and the Confederate flag only exists because of the secession," said CNN political commentator Sally Kohn. "To call the flag 'heritage' is to gloss over the ugly reality of history."

In recent years the flag has become a symbol of support of white supremacy, especially after convicted killer Dylann Roof posed with a Confederate flag and called for a race war before murdering nine blacks in their church in June, 2015. Photographs of white supremacist rallies often show the Confederate flag paired with the Nazi flag, another symbol of hate toward anyone not of white European origin.

Some would simply view the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of defiance toward government regulations or part of the South's past. Others view it as a hate symbol that should not be flown on public property (private property is open to anything the owner wants). The battle flag should be relegated with other Confederate flags to Civil War museums, commemorative ceremonies and Civil War re-enactments.

This is the opinion of Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Tuesday of the month.